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Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven: The Quest : In which our heroes take on The Pan and watch as the city moves to a point of fatal conflict. What the bloody hell just happened?! One The morning after The Bacchinal comes as choices from the night before must be dealt with. ''Nellie'' . . . leaves the bed of Prince John. He is a consummate professional. She goes home, takes a shower and changes, and goes off to meet the lone member of the mysterious "Autumnal Forensic Court Services." She meets with the intriguing Robbie Dunleavy, propmaster extraordinaire, and member of the College of Nightmares, in a storage wearhouse for Pinewood Studios. Robbie lets her know that he doesn't have her boat, as it was given to the fine Changelings of the Water's Edge, who patrol the underground rivers of The Hedge. They talk a bit about the magic of The Pan with Robbie suggesting that she talk to The Duke of Letters about The Little White Bird, the Illuminated Text that has a spiritual connection to The Pan. He also mentions that there are rumors that the First Empire had a method of trapping the True Fae using boxes of stone and Iron, though the exact method is lost to time. She departs, only to find Gram has been texting her like mad. . . . ''Gram'' . . . awakens next to Lady Gloriana Balmoral, youngest and most beloved daughter of King Albert Balmoral, in a suite the Savoy Hotel. He has apparently taken the young lady's maidenhood. She has taken his amorous advances as a traditional Victorian girl would and suggests they announce the engagement at the end of the month (after Maggie and Beryl's wedding is over. Gram, in sheer panic, tries to get anyone else to come rescue him. Nellie talks him through the process of trying to let Gloriana down easy, but by the time he gets out of the bathroom Duke Mortimer and Lady Alexandra Severen are in the suite. Lord Mortimer proposes a simple solution, since hearing of his daughter's deflowering would cause King Albert to plunge this city into a new Ice Age, they will conceal the information for the good of everyone involved (Mortimer makes it known that on a personal level, he finds Gram's physicality with an innocent 16 year old repulsive). Gram makes the foolish choice to wink at Gloriana as she is ushered out. Lady Alexandra congratulates Gram telling him that Glory is too sheltered and needed to experience heartbreak in order to come into her own. She then tells him that they should all run, as the hotel will have figured out by now that the Balmoral family line of credit is gone. Before he runs, Nellie convinces him to grab the bloody bedsheets, thinking that the loss of childhood might be repellant to The Pan. ''Percy'' . . . discovers that his bike, trapped in The Hedge for many many months and experimented on by the now-comatose Oliver, has transformed into a fiery steed. He decides to explore the Hedge, only to learn his steed can fly (a fairly terrifying prospect, till one gets accustomed to it). Flying over the Hedge, Percy can see it changing and warping, presumably because of various individuals in the Hedge changing it by their very presence. More concerning to note is that the Hedge seems to be very slowly getting taller, growing as he passes over it. Several times out of the corner of his eye he seems to see portions of the Hedge climbing up the buildings of the real world but every time he looks its gone. Two Percy decides to fly to The Clockwork Palace, finding it much larger from the outside than he would have ever guessed. He believes that the Empress is hiding The Home Post in her room, so he takes it upon himself to break into her rooms and take it. He doesn't find it, but finds what may well be Captain Hook's hook embedded in a glass wall along with the symbols of other major entitlements. He is caught ransacking the Empress's rooms by King George who places Excalibur to his neck and threatens to cut his head off. Empress Victoria intervenes, cleans the drop of blood off of his neck, and even with Percy's rude behavior lets him off with a verbal warning. King George promises to "gut him stem from stern" if he ever sees him behave in that manner again. Three Nellie goes to meet Professor Palindrome to ask him about the Little White Bird. He tells her that the text was lost ages ago by King Henry who apparently "traded it away", a major scandal at the time. He warns her that The Little White Bird should be read only in the Text form, as the texts sometimes can contradict the "common" text. He gives the example of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a book that ends with the children never returning from Narnia, rotting in their empty castle in decadent horror. Four The group gathers together to finalize their plans for taking on the Pan. Since they must present the remains of the Pan by Maggie and Beryl's Wedding, they must act within the week or they risk banishment for failure. Gram and Percy decide to train Perth and Nellie in swordsmanship, with Gram teaching during the day, and Percy doing so in their dreams at night. They take a final accounting of the supplies created by Weaponsmith: *Four "Choppers" crude swords made of Cold Iron. *Four bags of iron shavings, capable of bursting on contact. *A set of jerryrigged armor made of Cold Iron platings and leather straps. *Several bags of Cold Iron chunks (for use in a sling or slingshot). *Jerry-rigged Cold Iron points on arrows. *A jagged Cold-Iron-tipped spear. Five Nellie goes looking for a copy of the Little White Bird in the library of The House only to be summoned down to the basement by the Man in the Mirror. He asks her what she was looking for, suspicious that The House is contacting the Motley behind his back . . . again. When Nellie reveals what she's looking for the Mirror gives a pause and informs her that King Henry traded it to Lord Henry Blackmund Six The Motley goes to see Lord Henry, arriving to find him splattered with a strange-smelling blood that gives Percy a supreme desire to run. Lord Henry laughs when they ask to have the book back, and tells them that after he discovered who The Duke of Exeter really was, he decided to give it to him as a gift, a joke so private that the duke didn't even get it. Percy resolves to rob the Duke, a dangerous prospect. Seven Percy invades the dreams of the Duke several nights in a row, planting clues that the book is important enough to display prominently. After a few nights of this, Percy feels confidant enough to invade the his home, Bridgedown. Dodging the duke's wife, Lady Bridget, Percy steals the book, seemingly without incident. Eight Gram takes a shortcut through the Hedge to see an Anti-King George protest being lead by Rodger West. West claims that if the king was the "right and just" ruler of Summer the charter would never allow a protest to take place. Summer itself wants George out and will prove it by granting a massive heatwave to the city of London, that it has never seen before. The assembled protesters proceed to burn the king in effigy. Nine Nellie reads the Illuminated Copy of The Little White Bird, discovering the following information about The Pan: *His mother was a human and his father was a giant bird. *He flew to Kensington Gardens as a "eons old" baby, but was convinced by The Zookeeper that he is not a bird and thus cannot fly. *In order to regain his powers, he makes a dark deal with Mab that involves the ritual killing of his own mother. She agrees to give him his powers and more, if he promises to keep "filthy children" away from her. He breaks his promise by turning the children into monsters. *He stalks Kensington Gardens waiting for lost children to "play with"; if none come along, he hunts them down. **He was taught games by a girl named Mammie Mannering who was forced to play games with him for a long time until she taught him Hide and Seek and used that to escape. His fury still knows no bounds. **There are massive unmarked graves in Kensington that hide the bodies of children Pan played with a little too hard. Ten Gram discovers that in the two weeeks since he's seen Gloriana, she's been slipping love letters under his dorm room door. They reveal a city on the brink, a war going awry, and a wedding about to break up (also, some really terribly purple prose). He destroys the letters by burning them. Eleven All the Motley members decide to enjoy their last day before the battle. Nellie visits William Joyce, Gram sees Susan Marshall (among others), Perth goes on a hell of a bender, and Percy spends the whole day with Donna. Twelve The group decides to make a warning to others, a list of all the secret information, plots, plans, and horrors they are dealing with. They are going to take this list, place it in an envelope addressed to Beryl, and give the envelope to Susan Marshall with the instruction that if they do not contact her in a few days she should mail the letter. They also leave a copy of the list, with a picture of the Motley members and the key to the attic in the lobby (just in case someone who looks just like them pops up any time soon). At the last moment they decide to write the words "DON'T TRUST THE MIRROR" in big letters on the bottom of the list. Thirteen The time comes for the battle with The Pan. At dawn the plan springs into action, with Nellie demanding to play a game with the Pan, but saying only those who signed The Charter of the Land can play, therefore The Light and The Shadow cannot play. When the Pan gets into position to play a game of Bulldog, Percy uses an arrow to set off a small explosive covered by chunks of Cold Iron hidden under him, knocking him back into the trees. When he emerges again (to slam Nellie into the ground, screaming "Tag!"), Perth throws a net made of Gram and Gloriana's bedsheets over him, and Percy hits him with the spear knocking him to the ground, where Gram promptly decapitates him. As they stare in shock that not only did the actually did they kill the Pan, but they did it in about 15 seconds, they start to feel a sense of dread -- the body isn't disappearing or transforming. It just looks like the body of a twelve-year-old boy in a green leotard. Then smoke starts to billow from his still-bloodied stump of a neck and forms into a creature with the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat -- the literal greek god Pan. It smiles and flies directly upwards. Our terrified heroes run, with Percy only having enough foresight to grab his spear (but leaving every other weapon behind in the park) and the Pan's head. Fourteen "I'm not getting drunk. I'm getting just right." -- Percy While getting good and drunk to calm their nerves, Gram realizes that The Wedding is in a scant two days and they have no idea where it is. A call to Ben Ashmore reveals that the whole Motley is in the wedding party and thus must report to Astrid Glass, who is acting as wedding planner, at The Eccentric Club. The Motley heads over (using Martin's flat as a shortcut) and accidently lets slip to Astrid that they managed to kill the Pan. She's thrilled, as she bet on them at The Jade Warren. She also reveals that the city is expected to slip into a massive heatwave today (fulfilling Rodger West's prediction from earlier). She send them home. Fifteen Gram get's the call he's been dreading for some time from the girl he left behind. She claims she kidnapped Maggie and will only release her if Gram comes get her from an abandoned and run-down building in East London. Gram calls Beryl, but Beryl claims Maggie's fine and nothing is wrong. Perth, Gram, and Nellie take a cab to the location, while Percy drunkenly wanders around London trying to buy Donna an engagement ring. The others eventually coax him into getting in a cab and meeting them. Sixteen At the building, they find a note from Gram's Girl to go to the top floor, where they find Maggie's cell and Wes Price who says that his new employer wants our heroes to leave London. If they don't, Wes will release footage of Gram and Maggie together, along with information about how Percy is an exact genetic match for The Duke of Exeter. If they try to harm Wes, the snipers across the street will take them all out. Gram uses Vainglory to protect himself and Percy attacks Wes, only to be shot in the neck. Nellie opens a door to The Hedge out of one of the windows and they fall down a cliff into a swampy pool of water, unsure of what to do next. . . . The World Famous London Daily Mirror For other articles see- London Daily Mirror ''Prittering Price Fisher Under Investigation for Securities Fraud'' U.K. Central Bank investigators said they had uncovered records at Prittering Price Fisher Finance that appear to be fraudulent. "Some customer statements do not reflect securities in the firm's possession," said Harold Herne, chief forensic accountant for the UKCB. PPF was charged with securities fraud Thursday after an employee being questioned about the recent electronic troubles notified authorities that one of his superiors had told them they had manufactured over 700 million in fraudulent accounts in a complex money laundering scheme . Financial analysts expressed concern about PPF on several occasions, including 1997, when authorities was told in a letter that PPF was running a Ponzi scheme, The Washington Post reported Monday. However, the UKCB did not examine the operation until last week, due to the letter being postmarked from "Gringotts Bank" the fictional Goblin-run bank from the popular Harry Potter book series. (MORE FRAUDULENCE ON PAGE 3) ''Flaming Poo a Big To Do'' An explosion that rocked the posh Kensington neighborhood Friday morning, as a non-venting bag of fertilizer exploded with the force of a stick of TNT, investigators tell the Mirror in an exclusive. A newly immigrated worker, hired to fill in repairing the lawn at Kensington before work hours left the bag under several slabs of stone, compressing the substance causing a small spark, presumably from a cigarette, to cause the bag to explode. Luckily for our thoughtless gardner, no one was hurt, though a large section of the ground will need to be fully re-sodded. Rumors of a headless homeless child being found on the site have been confirmed to be just another part of the scurrilous urban legands about the Gardens that spread from time to time. (THATS IT. ITS JUST A BLURB. YOU WANTED MORE? TOO BAD!) Questions... Questions that Need Some Form Of Written Response For other questions see- The Master Question List *WHAT. THE. FUCK. Seriously, what the fuck?! *Could King Albert Balmoral really plunge London into an Ice Age? Just how powerful is the King of Sorrow? *Are the rumors of The Home Post true? Where is it? Was the Mirror lying? *What did King Henry get in return for giving Lord Henry Blackmund the Illuminated Text? *Who the hell is Wes' Patron? How did he find Gram's Girl? Category:Book Two